Artist Anat Ronen finished paining the traffic control cabinet at the corner of Willowbend Boulevard and West Bellfort Street. She painted morning glory vines on the cabinet. 30 other cabinets will also be painted. Friday, June 5, 2015, in Houston. ( Marie D. De Jesus / Houston Chronicle ) less

Artist Anat Ronen finished paining the traffic control cabinet at the corner of Willowbend Boulevard and West Bellfort Street. She painted morning glory vines on the cabinet. 30 other cabinets will also be ... more

Photo: Marie D. De Jesus, Staff

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Artist Anat Ronen began painting the 8x4-foot traffic signal control cabinet at the corner of West Bellfort and Willowbend Streets with a morning glory design Thursday morning. By the day's end she had finished the first of 31 planned "mini murals" by street artists in a new program organized by UP Art Studio and supported by various municipal programs and organizations. less

Artist Anat Ronen began painting the 8x4-foot traffic signal control cabinet at the corner of West Bellfort and Willowbend Streets with a morning glory design Thursday morning. By the day's end she had finished ... more

Photo: Molly Glentzer

Image 4 of 8

Artist Anat Ronen began painting the 8x4-foot traffic signal control cabinet at the corner of West Bellfort and Willowbend Streets with a morning glory design Thursday morning. By the day's end she had finished the first of 31 planned "mini murals" by street artists in a new program organized by UP Art Studio and supported by various municipal programs and organizations. less

Artist Anat Ronen began painting the 8x4-foot traffic signal control cabinet at the corner of West Bellfort and Willowbend Streets with a morning glory design Thursday morning. By the day's end she had finished ... more

Photo: Molly Glentzer

Image 5 of 8

Artist Anat Ronen began painting the 8x4-foot traffic signal control cabinet at the corner of West Bellfort and Willowbend Streets with a morning glory design Thursday morning. By the day's end she had finished the first of 31 planned "mini murals" by street artists in a new program organized by UP Art Studio and supported by various municipal programs and organizations. less

Artist Anat Ronen began painting the 8x4-foot traffic signal control cabinet at the corner of West Bellfort and Willowbend Streets with a morning glory design Thursday morning. By the day's end she had finished ... more

Photo: Molly Glentzer

Image 6 of 8

Artist Anat Ronen began painting the 8x4-foot traffic signal control cabinet at the corner of West Bellfort and Willowbend Streets with a morning glory design Thursday morning. By the day's end she had finished the first of 31 planned "mini murals" by street artists in a new program organized by UP Art Studio and supported by various municipal programs and organizations. less

Artist Anat Ronen began painting the 8x4-foot traffic signal control cabinet at the corner of West Bellfort and Willowbend Streets with a morning glory design Thursday morning. By the day's end she had finished ... more

Photo: Molly Glentzer

Image 7 of 8

Artist Anat Ronen on Thursday painted a traffic control cabinet with spring colors﻿ on the corner of West Bellfort and Willowbend Boulevard﻿. This is the first of many utility boxes she hopes to camouflage.

Artist Anat Ronen on Thursday painted a traffic control cabinet with spring colors﻿ on the corner of West Bellfort and Willowbend Boulevard﻿. This is the first of many utility boxes she hopes to camouflage.

Photo: Marie D. De Jesus, Staff

Image 8 of 8

Artist Anat Ronen stands in the corner of Willowbend Boulevard and West Bellfort Street where she painted morning glory vines on a traffic control cabinet Friday, June 5, 2015, in Houston. ( Marie D. De Jesus / Houston Chronicle ) less

Artist Anat Ronen stands in the corner of Willowbend Boulevard and West Bellfort Street where she painted morning glory vines on a traffic control cabinet Friday, June 5, 2015, in Houston. ( Marie D. De Jesus ... more

Photo: Marie D. De Jesus, Staff

Mini-murals brighten city, reduce graffiti

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A morning glory vine with enormous blooms has overtaken the traffic control box at the corner of Willowbend and West Bellfort in southwest Houston.

The vine isn't a weed. It's a mini-mural painted Thursday by Anat Ronen, an Israeli who came to Houston to work in a real estate investment office and became a painter.

She'd driven by the 8-foot-by-4-foot control boxes many times. But when she finally stood beside one with her paints and brushes, she was inspired by its potential.

"You get the feel, you get the vibe, you get the size, too," she said. "I was like, 'Wait a minute, this is quite a canvas.' "

Ronen is one of 15 area street artists turning these utility boxes into murals as part of an ambitious pilot program to discourage graffiti and bring public art to areas of the city where it is rarely seen. Officials will gather at the site Saturday to celebrate her work of art, the program's first.

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The Houston Arts Alliance reports that the city owns 546 art objects, not counting those at its airports. But only 35 pieces are on display outside Loop 610, where four-fifths of the population lives.

"This is an incredible, quick and beautiful way to get art into neighborhoods," Sara Kellner, the alliance's civic art and design director, said of the mini-mural initiative. "It's a high-impact, low-cost project."

In communities across the U.S., public art has proven to deter graffiti vandalism. Taggers may break laws, but they tend to respect others' art and leave it alone, said Noah Quiles, owner of UP Art Studio on Elysian Street north of downtown, who proposed the pilot project.

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Houston has 2,400 traffic control boxes. He sees them as "blank canvases brimming with creative opportunity."

Ronen wants to make the boxes disappear. She painted the vine as a kind of camouflage, "so it looks like a part of the greenery."

Pilot program

Willowbend resident Rose Corder, who passes the intersection daily, loves Ronen's mural and hopes a traffic box at Willowbend and Cliffwood gets a similar treatment. It has been tagged by vandals before.

The pilot program will transform 32 utility cabinets by the end of July at a cost of $48,000. All but one are within District K, where council member Larry Green allocated most of the money from his office's $1 million service fund to support the initiative. The other is in District B.

Each of the murals costs about $1,500; $700 of which goes to the artist.

Until the mini-mural program came along, District K held only two pieces of civic art: Elaine Bradford's colorful installation "Pachidaki and His Flying Friends" at the Vinson Neighborhood Library and a portrait of Meyerland developer George B. Meyer Sr., on view at the Meyer Public Library.

The mini-murals are a way to bring civic art to communities that don't have much and also help provide a sense of community, Green said. The program was a good fit with his ongoing "Clean it up, Green it up" beautification campaign, which recently planted 2,000 trees.

He also wanted to support area artists. "Some of these artists are absolutely amazing," he said.

Ronen became a professional street artist "by mistake." After she came to the U.S. nine years ago and her job at the real estate investment office didn't last, she applied for an artist's visa.

"And to my great surprise, they granted it to me. So I have to make my living as an artist," she said. "I didn't know I could do all of this when I started. But from one gig to the other, it became apparent that I'm good at murals. I'm fast and OK."

Baker Hughes recently hired Ronen to paint murals for convention exhibits in Houston and Denver. She's just 32-feet shy of completing a 250-foot mural at Blackshear Elementary School that re-creates selfies from the community. And she's been invited to paint in Bristol, England, next month during Upfest, the world's largest street-art festival.

'Not graffiti'

Other artists in the pilot program learned to paint by doing graffiti but now produce commissioned murals. Ronen is among five urban artists who recently completed murals promoting the Houston Zoo's new lowland gorilla habitat.

Quiles, who curated an innovative gallery show of works by such Houston street artists, said taggers can evolve into fine artists if they're good. "I like to think we're removing the negative stigma. This is not graffiti. This is art," he said.

Kellner anticipates an open application process for future mini-murals that would provide opportunities to academically-trained artists. All of the mini-mural designs must be approved by the city.

She said the alliance, which manages the city's art commissions and collection, has also launched programs with other city departments that take art beyond the Loop. More than a half-dozen teams of artists created installations within PODS containers that have traveled throughout the city since last fall. Last year the city also launched an ongoing art parking meter program that began in the warehouse district and along Washington Avenue.

'Exchange of worlds'

Quiles is working with the mayor's office of cultural affairs, the public works department, the alliance, the Brays Oaks and Five Corners Management Districts, and the nonprofit organization Fresh Arts, which is helping to raise funds for more mini murals. But private funds will likely be needed to continue the program, said Minnette Boesel of the cultural affairs office. Council districts' service budgets will be tighter next year.

"Out in the street, for the public, I try to be very responsible," she said. "This project is good because it's not on deserted buildings or in parts of town people won't ever see. The neighbors get to see us, and we get to see them; it's like an exchange of worlds."